Shea Theodore

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

8 goals and 33 assists in 55 games — 41 points — at 21:26 a night. Plus-16, 136 shots at 5.9 per cent, two on the power play, 18 penalty minutes.

Fifty-five games. The last six seasons read 61, 79, 71, 53, 78 and 55.

53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 995 minutes, the 72nd percentile, with his ice at 52-37 against an expectation of 45.19-39.88 — seven more goals than the chances called for and three fewer allowed.

He started 50.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 49th percentile. Even starts, twenty-one minutes, and the best chance share on this blue line.

The Finesse Game

136 shots at a median of 48 feet, with 64 per cent of his attempts from beyond forty and 11 per cent from inside twenty.

Beyond forty feet: 84 shots on goal and five goals — 5.95 per cent, nearly double the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 32 shots and one goal, 3.13 against a league rate of 8.83. Inside twenty: 16 shots and three goals, 18.75 per cent.

183 tracked attempts, 53 of them slap shots — a 29.0 per cent share — and a shot measured at 96.3 mph, the 85th percentile.

So this blue line ran the same experiment four times. Theodore slaps 29 per cent at 96 mph and got five goals from eighty-four long shots; Alex Pietrangelo slaps 29 per cent at 99 and got five from a hundred and seventeen; Alec Martinez slaps 21 per cent at 100 and got none from fifty-two; Nicolas Hague slaps 30 per cent at 99 and got none from seventy-four. Four men, one method, and a spread from zero to six per cent. That is what noise looks like when it is written down.

66 goals and 198 assists in 450 career games. The passing is the file and the 33 assists in 55 games is the rate that matters.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 197 pounds, with 18 penalty minutes in 55 games and 145 in 450 career games — a low rate.

3.19 miles a game at the 89th percentile, at a top speed of 22.1 mph, the 39th, with 1.0 bursts above twenty a game at the 54th.

A great deal of ground from ordinary speed — the same shape as most of the mobile defencemen in this edition, and it means edges rather than acceleration.

He carries the puck out under pressure rather than passing it away, which is what a twenty-one-minute defenceman with 198 career assists is for.

He is not physical, does not clear his crease, and gives up the front of the net to whoever wants it, which on a pairing is a thing somebody else has to cover.

The Intangibles

Twenty-sixth overall in 2013, eight seasons, 450 games, 264 points across Anaheim and Vegas, and a Stanley Cup.

66 goals and 198 assists, and a plus-64.

He is twenty-eight, and he has never been badly hurt and never been fully available either.

What the file describes is a legitimate first-pair puck-mover on a Cup winner who has spent six seasons being the club’s second-most-used defenceman because of it. Forty-one points in fifty-five games is a sixty-point rate. The question has always been the fifty-five.